Select an edition for more focused local news coverage when you visit AL.com.

Birmingham

Huntsville

Mobile

Montgomery

Tuscaloosa

Anniston/Gadsden

Beaches

All Alabama

Don't worry. You can change this setting at any time to another local edition.

Brendan Kirby | bkirby@al.com

About Me:

Brendan is an investigative reporter for AL.com and its three newspaper affiliates. He is based in Mobile and joined the Press-Register in 2000, covering courts, politics and other topics in Baldwin County. Reach him at 251-219-5617 or email him at bkirby@al.com

Hey, there. I just wanted to clarify a few things. First, there was no trial because Heather pleaded guilty. She was on the wiretaps talking about drug deals, discussing purchases of the drug. The government said it was in quantities too large to be for personal use. She said she used the Ecstasy to feed her methamphetamine habit. Regardless, her actions still violated the law.

The government did not dispute that Pettersen had left the drug world on her own. I think it's important to note that she was not arguing that she did nothing wrong or that she did not deserve punishment. As she put it, it's not like she is an innocent person about to go to a concentration camp.

People can make up their own minds about the fairness of her sentence, whether prison is just for rehabilitation or punishment and what emphasis to put on deterrence. I just wanted to make clear that she did not express a "whoa is me" attitude.

Pettersen did plead guilty. The judge sentenced her earlier this month to a year and a day in prison. She has been free while the case was pending, although she has been under house arrest at her parents' house. The judge allowed her to remain out on those same conditions until the Bureau of Prisons designates a prison. She then will be allowed to self-report to that prison. That is fairly common for nonviolent offenders who comply with the rules of their release.

Without knowing the names of the students, school officials were not able to discuss what discipline infractions they accumulated (they likely would not have been able to dicuss those issues publicly anyway). The plaintiffs acknowledge that these are not one-time violations. But they say the students are not violent and did not commit serious offenses. The school system's position is that a long string of minor infractions add up to a serious violation.

Then central legal issue, though, is likely to be whether the school system affords students and their families an adequate opportunity to challenge a suspension before it takes effect.

The offense Edmonds pleaded guilty to was a fraud against the bank, not her employer. So even if her employer authorized it -- winch the employer disputes -- it still would be a fraud against the bank. That's why she pleaded guilty.

Wind, there are more than a billion Muslims on this planet and the vast majority reject terrorism. And I might point out that you could pick passages from the Bible that, if interpreted literally, would reflect badly on Christianity.

You are entitled to your opinion about what the genuine teachings of Islam are. But it is a fact that most Muslims believe otherwise, because most of them do not support indiscriminate killing of non-believers.

First of all, I'm not trying to smear Christianity. I'm only trying to point out that there are different interpretations in all of the religious texts. Second, it is just not true that most Muslims or even most Middle Eastern Muslims support terrorism. Think about how much worse terrorism would be if that were the case.

OK, Wind, fair point. Here are some facts. Check out this report by Pew last year (http://pewglobal.org/files/pdf/268.pdf).

You'll note that bid Laden at the time was rejected by a majority of respondents everywhere except the Palestinian territories and Nigeria's Muslim population. Only two countries registered a favorable view of Hamas, Egypt and Jordan (though, to be fair, Nigeria's Muslims and Lebanon's Shia population also had favorable views).

Only in Jordan (and again Nigeria's Muslims and Lebanon's Shia) does Hezbollah get majority support.

When asked if they identify with modernizers or fundamentalists, low percentages side with fundamentalists.

Certainly, Muslim support of these organizations, even in the moderate countries, is higher than people in the West would want. But that is not the same thing as saying that most Muslims are supporting terrorism.

A note about our coverage, in response to a reader's question. Kim Chandler of the Birmingham News and I are covering this trial together. We both have filed online posts and we both have had bylined stories that have run in both newspapers (and the Huntsville Times, as well).

Good question, whatsupwiththat. The reason this was not caught sooner is that Winkler, as I understand it, was playing a shell game with customer accounts. She would withdraw a small amount of money from one account and then replace it with money from another account before the customer even noticed. This went on for months, with the transactions growing ever larger.

That's how she ended up with a total of $135,000. Also, her position gave her access to the accounts and the ability to cover her tracks. According to the prosecutor, tellers often unwittingly participated. They would believe a customer was in her office when she would come out with a slip of paper with withdrawal amount.

The reason this took so long is that Hurricane Katrina struck during the heart of the investigation. Witnesses and suspects scattered. Law enforcement investigators had their own problems to deal with. It took a long time to rebuild the case.

Heather, good question. Keep in mind, that Jeter never was found to have been insane at the time of the crime. He was found incompetent to stand trial. That's two different things. You can be incompetent to stand trial but still legally sane at the time of the crime. If a defendant is incompetent to stand trial, the government has an opportunity to try to restore his competence, which generally means medicating him.

Masspike, I don't know the total number in Alabama (Chappelle is one of six investigators statewide, not counting the ones at headquarters. I can tell you that nationally last year, the federal-state unemployment insurance program paid out $156 billion. Of that, the program made $17.5 billion in "improper payments." That's about 11 percent, although the auditor could not say for certain that all of it was fraud. But that gives you an idea.

I think it was one of those things where one case led to another, which led to another. Also keep in mind that ATF was working with the local drug task force, which made a bunch of drug cases. And those can be harder and take longer to work.

ZeroGravity, this is not a new law. It's not prosecuted a lot, but it has been prosecuted before. This came up during the federal prosecution of Stephen Nodine. They got him under the same statute. The law requires the government to prove that the defendant is an unlawful drug user. So the feds can't come get you for having a gun and a legal prescription.

And possession does not require you to have the gun on you. If you regularly smoke marijuana or snort coke or whatever, and you have a gun in your house, you've broken the law.

A lot of people think this is an absurd law. I offer no opinion on that. People can make up their own minds.